Engineering shapes every part of our daily lives; from the water that flows from your faucet to the smartphone you carry around, the modern world runs on innovations and allows us to live the way we do. Today, engineering branches into more individualized categories, including civil engineering, chemical engineering, and countless others. However, these varieties of engineering would not be possible without the centuries of problem-solving and development from the past.
Jumping back to 2600 BCE, Imhotep [1], an ancient Egyptian architect, made history when tasked to build a tomb. Refusing to follow the conventional route of building a rectangular one, he decided to stack these structures on top of one another, creating the famous step pyramid. His creation paved the way for similar pyramids, notably the pyramids of Giza, to be built - and they still stand the same today and impress architects with their precision and durability. This period marks the early introduction to civil engineering, the foundation of what we define today as the “built environment” - roads, buildings, bridges, and dams [2]. More than 2000 years later, the ancient Roman empire further developed civil engineering with many ingenious innovations [3]. With the invention of Roman concrete, they designed and built more than 50,000 miles of roads and aqueducts that transported goods and water vast distances. Their architectural achievements, such as the construction of the esteemed Colosseum and Pantheon, further redefined the usage of arches and concrete in structures [2].
Mechanical engineering first appeared through inventions such as boats and windmills, but truly accelerated in Europe with breakthroughs such as the printing press, textile machines, and ideas of human flight. This surge of development called for rapid technological growth, especially from the 1800s to the innovation we still observe to this day [4]. The Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of modern engineering by shifting from manual labor to mechanical labor with steam power to fuel engines and factories. This period also introduced electrical technology to the world, as inventions such as the telephone and the lightbulb emerged. This opened the path for the widespread use of electronic devices and gadgets today. Shortly after, a revolution in chemical engineering surfaced, using chemical reactions to transform everything, from creating life-saving drugs to lithium batteries and biofuels.
Although the ancient origins of engineering may sound primitive or uninspiring, the engineering process of the Great Pyramids still stumps historians and archaeologists to this day. Historians believed that they were inspired by the “stepped” mastabas in Nubia, a tomb that greatly resembled the shape of a pyramid and contained underground burial chambers [5]. However, the large scale of the pyramids still causes historians to be unsure exactly how they were built, but some theories are more widely accepted than others. It is believed that the Egyptians moved the massive stone blocks that make up the pyramids by utilizing large ramps and sleds to drag these blocks up the ramps. However, there is still controversy if the ramps used were exterior ramps that either zig-zagged or spiraled around each pyramid, or internal ramps. Most experts agree that both ramps were used, and the exterior ramp would be removed after construction finished [6]. Most of the large stone blocks used on the outside were limestone, however the internal walls used granite. The outer layer of the pyramid was encased in a fine limestone that was polished, giving the great pyramids a spectacular white appearance. Egyptians also used the force of gravity and a weighted string to measure and create perfectly vertical surfaces [7]. Overall, the creation of the great pyramids is still a phenomenal engineering feat that continues to impress historians and inspire the scale and potential of the engineering of the future.
As our societal needs shift and rise, the future of engineering is subject to change and expansion in conjunction with many other fields. Future directions of engineering include utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to make specific processes and tasks more efficient, sustainable design and the creation of renewable energy, and cybersecurity to maintain data safety and privacy. Although the field of engineering has evolved from its beginnings and the first inventor Imhotep, the goal of engineering has always stayed the same: to solve and create efficient solutions to the problems we observe around us.